Beastie Boys - Beastie Boys: Hot Sauce Committee Part Two

The members of the Beastie Boys are responsible for many unforgettableâ€"and regrettableâ€"pop-culture fads. Whether it’s inadvertently pioneering the cringe-worthy rap-rock movement that dominated the mainstream musical landscape for most of the ‘90s, giving scrawny white boys everywhere the confidence to rap or bringing the angst of the urban skate ethos to the masses, the band members have proven themselves as sonic mavericks and cultural arbiters who lead and never follow. Providing the soundtrack for almost three generations of youthful rebellion, this veteran hip-hop trio proves that it can still churn out the ill beats and conjure the palpable sonic chemistry...

Dj Shadow - DJ Shadow - Endtroducing…

It’s an uncomfortably common practice in the cult of music critique for writers to overstate the importance of particular albums. Subsequently, long-players by relative makeweights like the Longpigs are talked about amongst scribes of a certain age as lost classics, and the consumer can pick up a deluxe edition of almost any album released prior to 2004, replete with unnecessary ‘bonus’ content that’ll never get played. So allow me to undersell the significance of DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing… LP, the Californian producer’s debut of 1996. It’s alright. It’s got merit. Its influence is definitely noticeable. It can be heard...

Radiohead - Radiohead

"Separator"from the album The King of Limbs2011iTunesPlenty of bands are perfectly content to find a sound that suits them and spend their careers making variations on the same album. Radiohead is not one of those bands.In fact, you could argue that Radiohead has never really settled on a sound at all. From Pablo Honey in 1993 through The King of Limbs in 2011, the English band's most consistent hallmark has been the restless wanderlust of a never-ending search for what's next.That's a source of frustration for fans of the band's early work, who...

Radiohead - Radiohead - Amnesiac (2001)

To try and review Radiohead’s Amnesiac, even with the benefit of hindsight, requires the right frame of mind.  Attempting to critique or describe the album to anyone is akin to explaining the symmetry or physics of an Escher drawing.  Your mind goes round and round until you concede that only the architect fully understands the work’s construction.  Like an Escher piece, Amnesiac is complex and undoubtedly a work of art.  But do I enjoy it?  Do I comprehend it well enough to develop an opinion about the album?  Maybe, I’d like to think I do, but I must be sure. ...

Radiohead - Radiohead - Ok Computer (1997)

By the time OK Computer was released, Radiohead had already made the far left turn with The Bends that would send them off the highway and into a forest of"Fake Plastic Trees" where the only impedance to their sound would be their own creative limitations.  It wouldn't be until Kid A and Amnesiac that the band and world would discover where that creative landscape ended: a cliff and a drop-off into musically induced mental illness.  OK Computer though does start to give the passengers in this speeding sedan a hint that something is askew.  It takes that discovered focus, the identity that The Bends helped Radiohead find for themselves, and steps on the accelerator slowly...

Radiohead - Radiohead - Hail To The Thief (2003)

There are a few artists that make reviewing music a daunting task.  Radiohead without a doubt, is one of those artists. To add to that stress, I’ll be taking on one of their most controversial records, Hail to the Thief. The album title, widely considered to be a poke at the mess the United States refers to as the 2000 Presidential elections. As for the music?  By far, the pinnacle album to a long and well-respected career. It’s amazing the diverse range these guys pull off in just about an hour (longest of their career) of work.  From electronically driven tracks...

Radiohead - Radiohead - Pablo Honey (1993)

I was a little apprehensive when tasked with reviewing Radiohead's debut album, Pablo Honey but in the end, it allowed me to look at the humble beginnings of a band that would eventually become one of the most important in modern rock/pop/indie/alternative music.

The timing of Pablo Honey couldn't have been worse. Think about the landscape of Brit-pop.1993 was the lead-up to Oasis' Definitely Maybe. Blur had a hit on their hands with Modern Life Is Rubbish, Manic Street Preachers were picking up steam (before Richey James went missing), The Verve, Swervedriver, Ride, Suede. Brit-pop and Shoegazer... How could a band...

Suede - Suede - Coming Up

"Pick a fight with Suede, you gonna pick a fight with the Suede fanbase," warned Matt Lucas on Shooting Stars in 1997. Leave aside the fact that Lucas was then dressed as a menacing man-baby: the truly surreal thing about this pop culture nugget is its target. Suede, suburbia’s moodiest, druggiest misfits, were now so mainstream-famous that they could be knowingly mocked on primetime, thanks to their biggest album yet, the hit-rammed, melody-overloaded Coming Up.

Fifteen years later, it seems obvious that Britpop’s John the Baptists would rise from the grave to claim some of the rewards being lavished on lesser...

Pet Shop Boys - Pet Shop Boys - Most Incredible Thing (2011)

There's a lot of latitude awarded to musicians who have sold millions of records. They get to dabble with projects of love that most struggling bands just can't afford to take the time to do. Some squander that opportunity (Spiderman musicals anyone?), others, like the Pet Shop Boys, make the most of it.In the case of multi-million-selling dance outfit Pet Shop Boys, they have decided to use their artistic freedom to write the score to a ballet. The accompanying album, The Most Incredible Thing, comes out on March 22nd. The piece is based on the Hans Christian Anderson story of...

Beastie Boys - Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Commi...

How do you place the Beastie Boys when they finally hang up their samplers? Pioneers? Sell-outs? Futurama guest stars? All of the above is true to some degree, and their latest effort, "Hot Sauce Committee Part Two", sees them try to force everything the New Yorkers are known for into one album. By the way, if you were wondering about Part One, the most confusing email ever put paid to that. In short, they've come full circle and the first instalment has been replaced by Part Two, which had been re-sequenced and moved until it resembled Part One almost perfectly....